1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates a business method and process for managing data accumulation and pricing the use of accumulated data, and, in particular, to receiving instructions and delivering customized sets of information or reports from a database at a fee per database field.
2. Description of the Related Art
Databases enable users to enter and access an almost unlimited amount of information. There are many variations for pricing access to or use of a database. Some vendors price the right to input data; some price the complexity of the database; some price the software that creates the database; some price access to the site housing the database; some price the number of reports of the data; some charge a subscription fee for use of the database; and some charge for time on the web server. Mailing list database vendors and other vendors of data price by the subset of the data in the database, but the vendor sets up the database fields and the entry and administration process. In the case of this invention; the end user is constructing the database and establishing the methods and procedures for inputs and reports through a service that provides the infrastructure to accomplish the unique and individual data collection and reporting requirements of the end use. The invention is a business method and process to enable the configuration and management of the “data supply chain” for the user of the invention, from determining the data fields to be input through to the user and the vendor calculating a fee per data field that provides the user with an option to approve or acknowledge the price prior to the generation or distribution of a report.
There has been a need for a method to manage costs for data input and management in order for a data generator and consumer to control their costs for reports and assurance that the data delivered to them or their surrogates through said reports is usable and appropriate for their unique knowledge management or business intelligence needs. We have coined the term “data supply chain” to help those with fiduciary roles or interests within businesses or organizations to view the management of their data as a cost center subject to pricing schedules and planning. This method will reduce the user's risk of getting unstructured data or insufficient data or too much data or data routed to inappropriate recipients from a database. The vendor is similarly assured that compensation for the use of their back end database structure; the software to capture data and report it; and the cost of the website and other infrastructure to house the database and provide users with access to it is in direct proportion to the user's drawing down of the data fields in the database. Notification of the User of the cost for the data report prior to generation and dispersion of the report also insures utility of the information to the user and therefore a win-win relationship with the vendor.
A web portal or local area network can accept a configuration profile specifying the data to be collected and other data input and structure rights and roles defined by the user. For example, a particular user may be interested in the current price of a piece of equipment, the performance indicators entered by users of that equipment, a listing of the employees who are using that equipment, and the ROI for the piece of equipment. When a user of a database driven website or local area network requests a report, the website or web portal owner or the vendor of the database design and configuration software then automatically builds the report and forwards it to the user or his surrogates.
Traditional web portals and local area networks do allow users to specify customized reports through configuration profiles. They do not enable a data supply chain process to be established from the configuration of the data fields; to the setting of policies for contributions to the dataset; and the setting of policies for reports; determining the price for the report to be provided on the fly by the database field; or notifying and receiving approval from the end user of a report.